Relations between lexical-temporal features in mothers' speech and infants' interactive behaviours

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Abstract
Research examining the relations between specific features of mothers' speech and infant behaviour has generally focused on the prosodic characteristics of infant-directed speech such as patterns of pausing and variations in fundamental frequency. The present study was aimed at extending these findings to include a series of other vocal parameters varying in degree of approximation to full realizations of linguistic signals, including lexical content. Face-to-face interactions of 14 French-speaking mothers with their 4-month-old infants were videotaped and coded according to four categories of infant behaviour and six categories of maternal speech. The results showed that the characteristics of mothers' speech were predictable from the categories of infant behaviour. In particular, mothers produced longer non-phonemic sound productions when the baby smiled and/or vocalized positively for a long time. When there was joint

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